The historic 2022 victory in getting union recognition for Amazon workers in a huge warehouse in Staten Island, New York, and the creation of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), is the subject of this candid and valuable film. It’s another reminder that the kind of rights that the ALU secured – however reasonable and modest – are still precarious, have never been freely given and need to be fought for. The corporation in question is uniquely powerful, well aware that it operates in a world where people will cancel their Washington Post subscription but not their Amazon Prime membership.
This documentary’s hero is Christian Smalls, who deserves his own chapter in the history of the American labour movement, alongside Sylvia Woods and Cesar Chavez. Smalls was laid off from the Amazon fulfilment centre for objecting to poor safety protocols; he set about creating a union, with a lonely, cold vigil outside the warehouse, handing out leaflets, accepting support from well-wishers, doing media interviews. The pressure grew, and the dream of creating a union was theoretically possible because of the law that if 30% of the workforce require it, a vote on unionisation has to be taken. Amazon’s workforce turnover means employees come and go and it is very difficult to get up to this point. But it was achieved, and a “yes” majority secured – after which Amazon started a huge legal campaign to have that vote annulled.
Directors Stephen Maing and Brett Story give a shrewd, fly-on-the-wall picture of the divisions within the union itself, with the working-class members and people of colour uneasy with the white college-grad contingent who are very gung-ho about protesting and getting arrested, not quite realising that for black people this is to risk death. These are the hard yards of standing up to a corporation with a vested interest in effacing workers’ rights.
• Union is in UK cinemas from 14 November.
